illuminating (and entirely accidental) bond of kinship between Bracconieri and Stubbe, considered one of the first serial killers in history. Accused of killing seventeen victims, women and children, he used to drink their blood and pull out their guts, acting in full moon nights.
What would Bracconieri think, had he been alive, of the sobriety of his ancestor?
The cynicism and rhetoric of the presenter made Riccardo burst: "I go to the bathroom to wash my hands and try to vomit."
Alida didn’t even look at him, fascinated by the screen as if she could enter it at any moment.
Peter Stubbe.
Of course, now she remembered.
She had read with morbid seduction of its atrocities several years ago, in a book written by Cesare Seda himself, called True Werewolves.
In the book, along with biographies of historically established werewolves, the man had devoted an entire section solely to the methods he considered valid to defeat lycanthropy.
Cannibalism.
There are stars at night...
"Cannibalism" explained Seda, who had started to expatiate on the subject, "is the practice for which a human being eats the flesh of another human being, as well as a term used in zoology to describe the act of eating members of their own species."
imperceptible if you turn your eyes on them...
"When an animal eats a fellow it is not for hunger, nor obviously as a cultural custom, like in the ritual cannibalism practiced among men, but it serves a therapeutic, healing function, which is triggered by times of maximum exhaustion of the beast, or during prolonged periods of illness."
but if you look at them shifting your gaze a little to the side...
"Animals are cannibals unconsciously and by necessity. It is as if their instinct suggested chasing a beast of the same species and eating its flesh in order to heal the illness of their own."
they shine more than any other.
The poem, stimulated by the words of Cesar Seda, reoccurred to the mind of Alida like a body resurfacing at great speed.
How did it go on?
She looked down the hall. The bathroom door was closed and the water opened by Riccardo flowed into the sink. She left the kitchen and went to the bedroom. She opened a drawer and pulled out an old notebook. She glanced at the pages, stopping at a point where, she did not even remember when, she had scribbled some verses, dedicating them to Luca.
There are stars at night
imperceptible if you turn your eyes on them
but if you look at them shifting your gaze a little to the side
they shine more than any other.
I hope that my eyes forever fully lay upon you,
that forever your retina carve my surface.
The word "carve" had been underlined, not by Alida. The line led to an arrow pointing at some words in capital letters: "about carving... I hope you never decide to slice me and see how I taste!"
Alida swallowed, but her throat had narrowed to the point that its walls were touching each other.
After reading True Werewolves by Cesare Seda, she had told Luca about the discoveries made by the man while studying cases of cannibalism among animals, and how he was convinced that cannibalism was the only way to heal lycanthropy. Luca had looked at her as if she had just strangled a kitten, dodging the issue, calling it foul. A few days later Alida had written that poem (she wrote poems often, it relaxed her nerves) and forgot the notebook on the kitchen table. Luca had found it while he was about to have breakfast and could not help reading it and commenting it with a joke.
Alida turned abruptly.
Riccardo had knocked on the door jamb and was peeking into the room.
"I'll be right there," she said. She put back the notebook and closed the drawer. Before getting up she took a couple of deep breaths, trying to release her tension.
She felt restless and excited like a lover at a clandestine meeting.
Cannibalism.
That was the only thought that swirled in her head like a giant moth around a neon light, preventing her from focusing on any other idea.
When she returned to the kitchen, Riccardo was busy gathering with a towel the last traces of eggs on the floor. 2030, luck would have it, had been interrupted by the advertising for a brand of kitchen rolls.
"Leave it alone," Alida said, bending down.
"I’m done." Riccardo squeezed the towel into the sink, then moistened it and swiped the floor one last time. Alida did not want to look into his eyes. She was afraid that he could see the aberrant project expanding inside her mind.
"What’s that, another box of jeans?" Riccardo asked pointing at the bandage hiding the wound on her thigh. Alida had not noticed that, in that position, her dress let a significant part of her left leg visible.
"Oh, nothing, it is..." without giving her them time to make up another lie, Riccardo stretched his neck and kissed her on the mouth.
July 19 – 10:12
When Alida opened her eyes, Riccardo was fast asleep in the side of the bed that had been Luca’s.
They had made love, and it had been so intense, because the only memories she had of him were related to the innocence of the orphanage.
After the intercourse, however, she had been overcome by a deep sadness, knowing that the pleasure was going to be nothing but a fragment of a life in which there could be no room for someone who was not of her same...
species...
... the act of eating members of their own species...
The memory of Seda’s sentence gave her a rush of adrenaline that had the effect of a dozen coffees. When she got out of bed, Riccardo let out a deep breath and turned on his side, showing a cotton gauze which protected a wound or a burn.
Alida went to the bathroom, washed and disinfected her wounds, careful not to wet the gauze. Then she went into the kitchen and wrote a note to Riccardo, informing him that she had things to do.
Before leaving, she went to the door of the room to lock it, but a sound caught her attention. She turned the handle and peeked inside.
The air was unbreathable. The blood had clotted like stains on a butcher's apron. The food tank was upturned and moved imperceptibly. Taking care not to trample on the remains of the rabbits, scattered like banana peels in a monkey cage, Alida entered the room and picked up the container. The rabbit with the spotted head looked at her with eyes full of gratitude.
It had been imprisoned for several days, yet he was still alive, only witness of the night in which its kidnapper had been on the brink of death.
"How do you do?" Alida whispered without taking her eyes off it.
Half an hour later, without straining the injured leg, she crossed the large hall of the National Library of Castro Pretorio, unaware of having been followed all the way.
July 19 – 11:46
The edition of Cesare Seda’s book was the same that Alida had loaned from the library and read a few years ago, during her studies on lycanthropy, with the certainty that her husband, while she crouched down on the sofa in the living room, was going in and out of immaculate courtrooms and influential law firms.
You were damn right about him going in and out, he just chose slightly narrower places than the door of a court.
While she was looking for a quiet place in which to review a copy of True Werewolves, resentment reddened her face, the reading room made her strangely uncomfortable. It was quieter than a church. Instead of the pungent odour of wax and incense, there were those of the disinfectant used on the floors and of the paper aging slowly in the cubicles of the shelves that doubled as room partitions. She sat next to a large window looking over a sunburnt courtyard where two girls in shorts were drinking from a fountain. The one in yellow shorts splashed her friend. They were having a good time, but their laughter did not scratch the silence of the library, making the scene look unreal, as if it wasn’t happening just a few yards away.
Before opening the book, Alida wondered how many other hands had leafed through it from t
he day she had returned it.
Judging by the excellent state, there wasn’t a great demand for it. Or maybe it was just a different copy. On the cover, two animal eyes stood out against a black background. Alida turned the book and Cesare Seda smiled at her from the back cover. He was thinner, with no moustache and more hair, curly and black. Sitting on a stylish leather armchair, he was showing like a trophy, a large and menacing wolf skull with dagger-like fangs.
Alida started reading the index.
She found what she was looking for after the large chapter devoted to German folk legends. The ideas expressed in the pages did not differ from what Seda had stated during the show; he argued and confirmed that, among the various methods to stop the curse of a werewolf, the most common, especially in the sixteenth-century Germany, was to eat the flesh of another werewolf.
A concept which clearness made Alida dizzy again.
She went on reading, refreshing notions she had already assimilated, but forgotten over time.
In the years following the fall of the Roman Empire, the meat of werewolves – regardless of whether it came from an alive or dead specimen – was used not only to defeat lycanthropy, but also to prevent it. To this end, especially among the wealthiest families, werewolf meat, highly priced, was given to children from an early age, minced and mashed up to obtain a soft pulp called sugus, since they could not munch it.
Alida then dwelled on the case of Bernard Biop, the cannibal of Paris, wondering why Seda has put it in that part of the book.
She obtained the answer after a few lines. The true story of which Biop had made